Hate groups and militias have been on the rise in the United States in recent years due to the demographic changes occurring in the country such as minority babies now becoming the majority. White supremacist and other hate groups have been on the rise since the announcement that white-non-Hispanic people will become the minority by 2050. Read more below.
The number of radical hate groups and militias has exploded in recent years in reaction to the changing makeup of America, and new census figures showing the majority of babies born in 2011 were non-white could fuel those simmering tensions, experts who track hate groups warned.
“White supremacist groups have been having a meltdown since the census bureau predicted that non-Hispanic whites would lose the majority by 2050,” said Mark Potok, spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups. “The demographic change in this country is the single most important driver in the growth of hate groups and extremist groups over the last few years.”
The data released this week revealed a tipping point in the country’s demographic shift. For the first time in the country’s history, more minority children were born than white children, setting the stage for an eventual non-white majority in America’s population.
The census found that 50.4 percent of births in 2011 were of Hispanic, black, Asian, and other minority children. White babies accounted for 49.5 percent of the country’s newborns.
In addition, more than 49 percent of all children under 5 years old are minorities, the report said.
For white supremacist and radical right-wing groups, the data is especially troubling, and made all the more apparent by the fact that a black man was elected president, Potok said.
“This very real and very significant change is represented in the person of Barack Obama. We’ve of course seen the most remarkable growth in the radical right since 2008, precisely coinciding with Obama’s first three years as president,” he said.
